Part 5 (1/2)
[Footnote 22: See extract from a letter written by him in Faillon, vol.
iii. p. 315. The Recollet, Pere Leclercq, is uncharitable enough to hint that the canoe accident may have been made to cover a lack of the doc.u.ments which the explorer professed to have had with him.]
[Footnote 23: See the _Recit d'un ami de l'Abbe Galinee_, in Margry, vol. i.]
[Footnote 24: Mere de l'Incarnation remarked even in her day the decrease of the native population. ”When we arrived in this country,”
she says, ”the Indians were so numerous that it seemed as if they were going to grow into a vast population; but after they were baptized G.o.d called them to Himself either by disease or by the hands of the Iroquois. It was perhaps His wise design to permit their death lest their hearts should turn to wickedness.”--_Lettres Spirituelles_, edition of 1681, p. 230.]
CHAPTER VII
GOVERNORs.h.i.+P OF M. DE LA BARRE
1682 TO 1685
The successors of Frontenac and d.u.c.h.esneau received their appointments in the month of May 1682, and arrived at Quebec towards the end of the following September. They were, respectively, a military officer named Lefebvre de la Barre who had served with some distinction in the West Indies; and a man of whose previous career little or nothing is known, one M. Jacques de Meulles. If the fault of Frontenac had been the a.s.sumption of too much state and dignity, and the exercise of too much self-will, the fault of La Barre was that he possessed too little dignity and extremely little firmness of character. The recall of Frontenac had practically been one more triumph for the ecclesiastical authorities, who caused it to be understood that, if d.u.c.h.esneau had also been recalled, it was simply to save Frontenac from too open humiliation. La Barre prudently determined, therefore, from the first not to come into collision with the clergy, whatever else he might do.
On the other hand the Abbe Dudouyt writing from Paris, enjoins prudence on the bishop, lest ”it should seem as if he could not keep on good terms with anybody.” With such dispositions on both sides, it is not surprising that, during the whole of La Barre's administration his relations with the church were extremely harmonious. The Abbe Gosselin says that he and Meulles ”revived the happy times of the highly Christian administration of M. de Tracy.” The king, however, did not view the situation with equal approval; the despatches of the period show that he thought that deference to the views of the clergy was being carried too far.
We have seen that, towards the close of Frontenac's administration, the Indian situation was again becoming critical. The arrangement patched up by him in the month of August was far from being of a very solid character; and when La Barre a.s.sumed the reins of government he found a widespread feeling of insecurity as to the continuance of peace. He thought it prudent, therefore, to summon, as Frontenac had done previously, a conference of persons specially competent to advise on the Indian question. The meeting took place on the 10th of October at Quebec, before Frontenac had left the country. He might, therefore, have attended it, had he chosen; and we cannot help feeling surprised that he did not. The general opinion expressed by those who took part in the deliberations was that the Iroquois were planning hostilities, and that the king should be asked to send out more troops. La Barre wrote home to this effect; but the same vessel that bore his despatch carried the returning ex-governor, who, on arriving in France, seems to have made it his business to throw cold water on the appeal for help. It was doubtless to Frontenac's interest to represent that he had left the country in a peaceful and secure condition; but his conduct would appear in a better light had he gone before the conference at Quebec, and there explained, in the presence of those possessing local information, why he considered that there was no danger. La Barre could then in writing to the government have given his reasons and those of his advisers for dissenting from the ex-governor's views, and the latter could honourably have made his own representations to the court. As it was, the man who had ceased to be responsible was allowed to thwart the policy of the actual administrator on whom the whole responsibility for the safety of the country rested. La Barre is not a man who attracts our admiration or sympathy, but, in this matter at least, it is difficult to feel that he received fair treatment.
Remembering all the trouble there had been between the former governor and the intendant, La Barre hastens to inform the court that he and Meulles are on the very best of terms. As they had scarcely been two months in the country when this despatch was written, the announcement seems a little hasty. Meulles on his part does not make any such statement, and his letters of the following and subsequent years show that he had not formed a very high opinion of his superior officer. He complains that the meetings of the Sovereign Council are held in the governor's own antechamber, amid the noise of servants going and coming and the clatter of the guards in an adjoining room. The minister takes no notice of this; and a year later Meulles returns to the charge, stating that the governor held the meetings ”in his own chimney corner where his wife, his children and his servants were always in the way.”
The intendant was a man of business, and liked to see things done in a businesslike way. If he did not admire the disorderly methods of the governor, neither did he approve of the dilatory methods of the council.
When matters were brought before him for adjudication he dealt with them promptly; and, in his desire to save delays, he disposed of some cases which the council considered as falling within its sole jurisdiction.
Frontenac, it will be remembered, had packed off young d'Auteuil, who had been nominated by d.u.c.h.esneau as attorney-general, to France to justify, if he could, the conduct he had been pursuing. The youth had come back a full-fledged attorney-general, and at once fell foul of the intendant, accusing him of exceeding his powers. Meulles was a prudent man and contrived to make his peace with the council. M. Lorin says there was probably as much real dissension as in Frontenac's time, but that it was hushed up. There is no evidence of this. Some dissension there may have been; but La Barre was not as fiery as Frontenac, nor was Meulles as intriguing as d.u.c.h.esneau. The same elements of discord were, therefore, not present.
We have seen that the court did not seem to take any serious notice of the charges of trading reciprocally brought by Frontenac and d.u.c.h.esneau against one another; and in this matter La Barre appears to have a.s.sumed from the first that for him there was an ”open door.” At a very early period of his residence in the country, he formed intimate relations with certain prominent traders; it soon became evident, indeed, that he had placed himself and his policy largely in their hands. They were in the main the same men with whom Frontenac had accused d.u.c.h.esneau of having underhand dealings, La Chesnaye, Lebert and one or two others.
According to Meulles, the governor not only carried on trade on his own account contrary to the king's regulations, but trade in its most illegal form, that is to say with the English. His Majesty's representative found out without much trouble what the Indians were well aware of, that the English paid a much better price for furs than could be got in Canada from the king's farmers who controlled the fur trade of the country. He talks freely indeed of the English in a despatch dated in May 1683, and says that they both sell goods cheap to the Indians and give them full price for their furs. It is a saying among the English, he adds, that the French do not _trade_ with the Indians but _rob_ them.
It is no wonder he was anxious to send his own wares to so good a market. If the intendant may be trusted, indeed the governor was continually receiving at the chateau at Quebec Englishmen and Dutchmen who were simply his agents at New York. La Hontan avers that he saw two canoe loads of his stuff at Chambly on their way to that emporium.
A man so devoted to money-making as La Barre could hardly be expected to take a very deep interest in the wider schemes of exploration and territorial expansion which appealed to the imagination of a La Salle.
Possibly he thought he could curry favour with the court by disparaging the achievements of the latter. In a despatch of the 30th May 1683 we find him saying that he did not think much of the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi, and that in any case there was a great deal of falsehood mixed up with the tales that were told of it. If the remark was meant to please, it seems to have been successful, for the king in his reply, under date 5th August following, says: ”I am persuaded with you that _Sieur de la Salle's discovery is very useless, and such enterprises must be prevented hereafter_, as they tend only to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain and to diminish the revenue from the beaver.” Could the power of official narrowness and ba.n.a.lity go further?
A man, taking his life in his hand, penetrates forest and jungle, commits himself to unknown waters, braves the encounter of hostile peoples, takes the risk of treachery among his own followers, faces every form of privation and all extremities of fatigue, travels a thousand leagues, and adds a continent to the possessions of his sovereign, only to have the verdict p.r.o.nounced by that sovereign that his discoveries are very useless, and that similar expeditions must be prevented for the future lest the beaver trade of Ca Canada suffer!
La Salle's great discovery was made in the month of April 1682.
Returning northwards in the autumn, with the intention of proceeding to France, and making a full report of his proceedings to the king, he heard, on reaching Michilimackinac, that the Iroquois were preparing a hostile movement against the Illinois. He determined at once to go back with a picked body of men to protect his threatened allies. The news of his discovery was therefore carried to France by the Recollet, Father Zen.o.be, who reached Quebec just as the s.h.i.+ps were leaving, and may possibly have sailed in the same vessel as Frontenac. He does not seem to have given any information, in pa.s.sing, to La Barre. The latter was expecting La Salle's return, and chose to put an unfavourable construction on his failure to appear. In writing to the minister he says that Fort Frontenac has been abandoned. The truth was that La Salle had left it in charge of one La Forest, and that subsequently a cousin of the explorer's, named Plet, had come from France to look after the trade of the fort in the interest of the parties in France who had advanced money for its construction and equipment. It is doubtful whether the place was ever left even temporarily unoccupied; but certainly La Salle had no intention of abandoning it. On the contrary, not knowing of Frontenac's recall, he had written to him in October 1682 asking him to maintain La Forest in command and to let him have a sufficient number of men for purposes of defence. What is singular is that he does not appear to have given Frontenac any more information regarding his discovery than Father Zen.o.be gave to La Barre. Possibly he had some hope, as the latter hints, of organizing a separate government in the new territory he had discovered. In no case, however, can La Barre's proceedings towards him be justified. On the pretext that Fort Frontenac had been abandoned, he took possession of it, and turned it, if we are to credit Meulles, into a trading-post for himself and his friends. He had a barque built there, professedly for the king's service on the lake, but used it mainly, the intendant says, for his own trade.
La Salle spent the winter in the Illinois country. In the spring of 1683 he wrote to La Barre from his fort of St. Louis, announcing his discovery, and expressing the hope that the kindly treatment which he had always received from the previous governor would continue to be extended to him. His financial affairs had for some time been in a very unsatisfactory state, but he expected, he said, to be able in the course of the then current year to place them on a sound footing, and prove that he had not undertaken more than it was in his power to accomplish.
He had meantime sent men to Montreal for supplies, but these did not return, nor did he get any reply from La Barre either to this letter or to a later one written in June. Instead of replying, La Barre sent an officer named Baugy to take possession of Fort St. Louis. La Salle, who had started for Quebec, met Baugy on the way, and sent back word to his men at the fort not to resist the seizure. Du Lhut, under instructions from the governor, followed shortly after, confiscated the merchandise stored in the fort, and brought it to Montreal. La Salle on arriving at Quebec saw La Barre, and obtained from him rest.i.tution of Fort Frontenac, but could not get any compensation for the loss he had sustained through the interruption of his trading operations at that point. He consequently proceeded to France in the fall of the year, and in the course of the winter presented a full statement of the case to the minister, M. de Seignelay. Only a few months before, the king had expressed the opinion above quoted as to the uselessness, or worse than uselessness, of such explorations as La Salle had been engaged in; but when the explorer himself appeared upon the scene, a change came over the views of the court. The king writes to the intendant that, not only is the fort which the governor had wrongfully seized to be handed over to La Salle, but that full reparation is to be made for all the loss which he has sustained, and that the intendant is to see that this is done. Writing to La Barre himself, the king informs him that he takes La Salle under his particular protection, and cautions the governor not to do anything against his interest. La Salle's agent, La Forest, is to be placed in charge of Fort St Louis.
Settling down to business, as he did, almost immediately on his arrival in the country, La Barre was naturally anxious that the persons to whom he issued hunting and trading permits under the regulations established in Frontenac's time should, as far as possible, be screened from compet.i.tion, and he therefore most ill-advisedly gave the Iroquois tribes to understand that they might treat as they pleased any persons found trading who were unprovided with permits signed by him. The Iroquois, greatly pleased to have a pretext for such operations, proceeded to plunder some canoes belonging to the governor's own friends, who were still in the woods on the authority of permits issued by Frontenac. This alarmed the governor not a little, and caused him, in the spring of 1683, to send a special vessel to France with an earnest request for military reinforcements. Worse news came to hand very shortly after. La Salle's fort of St. Louis having been seized, the governor wished to stock it with goods, and had despatched thither seven canoe loads to the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand francs. As these canoes were pa.s.sing through the Illinois country, where the Iroquois were on the war-path, the latter, who were not in a humour for fine discrimination, seized them, explaining afterwards that they supposed them to belong to La Salle, whose property they claimed to have the governor's permission to plunder. La Barre writes to the king, under date 5th June, in still stronger terms, and says that, with or without reinforcements, he will move against the Senecas about the middle of August. This was mere bl.u.s.ter, as no preparations had at that time been made for a campaign. The king sent out one hundred and fifty men in August; but these did not arrive till the 10th October. It was then decided that war should be waged the following year. The intendant appears to have agreed entirely with the governor that war was inevitable; his chief fear seems to have been that the governor, in whose stability of character he had very little confidence, would change his mind on the subject, and fall back on some weak and futile scheme of conciliation.
The winter of 1683-4 was not marked by any notable event. In the following spring, pursuant to the plan which he had communicated to the French government, the governor sent instructions to the post commanders in the West, La Durantaye, Du Lhut, and Nicolas Perrot, to rendezvous at Niagara with as many men of the different Ottawa tribes as they could persuade to follow them. At that point they would find awaiting them provisions, arms, and ammunition, with means of transportation to the scene of action. Home levies of militia and of mission Indians were at the same time being raised and equipped. At this stage of the proceedings it occurred to La Barre that it would be a good thing to inform the governor of New York, Colonel Dongan, of his intention to make war upon the Senecas. The communication happened to be particularly ill-timed. The English of Maryland and Virginia had been having their own troubles with the Iroquois, who had made many destructive raids into their territory; and in the early summer of 1684 Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, had gone to New York to consult with the governor there as to the measures to be adopted, and thence had gone on to Albany, Colonel Dongan accompanying him, to hold a conference with the offending tribes--in this case the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas.
Delegates from the Mohawks, who had not broken the peace, were also present; and one of them, Cadianne by name, made ample acknowledgment of the wrongs done by his brethren of the other tribes, to whom he took the opportunity of addressing some very severe and wholesome remarks.
Shortly afterwards delegates from the Senecas also arrived, when a general treaty of peace and good-will was made between the Five Nations on the one hand, and the English and their Indians on the other. It was in the midst of these proceedings that Dongan received La Barre's letter. He replied by saying that the King of England exercised sovereignty over the whole Iroquois confederacy, and that if the Senecas had committed the depredations complained of he would see that they made reparation; he hoped that La Barre, in the interest of peace, would refrain from invading British territory. He then took occasion of the conference to inform the tribes of the French designs, his object being to draw from them an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the English king in return for a promise of protection against the French. The tribes, who had some time before requested that the arms of the Duke of York (now James II) should be raised over their fortresses, consented to this, but with the not altogether consistent proviso that they should still be considered a free people. The subject was further debated at the chief town of the Onondagas, the central nation of the confederacy, a few weeks later. Dongan was represented by Arnold Viele, a Dutchman.
It happened that Charles Le Moyne of Montreal was also there, having been sent by La Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference, as well as the Jesuit, Father Lamberville. Very little progress was made with the diplomatic question; but the Seneca deputies expressed very savage sentiments in regard to the French, promising themselves a feast of French flesh as the result of the coming war.